Will your cousin (who lives across the country) choose what you will have for lunch?

Did your mother choose which underwear you are wearing today?

All very unlikely -yet both of these relatives could end up choosing whether you have a feeding tube placed in you, or whether you are kept alive on a ventilator in a diaper at the end of your life.

This is sometimes the case when we haven't created advance directives, and haven't spelled out in detail what we want or don't want, and haven't selected and educated a healthcare agent(s).

Beyond the obvious, there are two critical reasons that you should not allow the medical decision making role to fall haphazardly to your closest or most demanding family member should you become unable to make decisions for yourself....